10 Questions for the Best Prankster Ever

His credibility entirely shot, the original master of the mass-market hoax reveals his secrets on the occasion of April Fools' Day

A couple years ago, we profiled a man named Irwin Leba, "a rich and reclusive Texan whose mission in life is to balance the [federal] budget by taxing the obese." Leba was actually Alan Abel, an inveterate hoax master who joined forces with Esquire to pull off the April Fools' fix, which the Washington Post proceeded to blow open a week after the April issue hit newsstands. So serious, those guys.

Abel, now 80, has been tricking the media into covering his ridiculous proposals for more than fifty years. Since your average man shouldn't really be bothering himself with carrying out an April Fool's joke, we caught up with a master to get the story behind some of his most famous pranks (Citizens Against Breastfeeding, anyone?) and some current events (that Madoff guy's fake, right?).

ESQUIRE: What was the inspiration behind S.I.N.A. (The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals), your first big hoax that called for all cats, dogs, horses, and cows to wear pants?

ALAN ABEL: I saw a cow and bull stopping traffic down in Texas, having sex on the highway. There were two ladies hiding their faces and another couple was angry. It was about fifteen or twenty minutes of delay on the highway, and I thought up the idea of clothing all these naked animals. So I wrote this story and sent it to the Saturday Evening Post, and they rejected it. I thought it was satire, but they thought it was real. The editor signed a personal note on the form rejection letter. So I thought, well, I'll put it on the world stage.

ESQ: What real news stories have you seen that you thought must be hoaxes?

AA: I look at the newspapers, and I cannot believe most of the stories I read. Bernie Madoff, who actually screwed millions of people for billions of dollars, it's just unbelievable what he got away with and how long it took for him to be exposed. A guy like that should be hanged. Actually, he's going to die in prison anyhow, but they should really put him in the stocks, throw rotten fruit at him for a few days, and then hang him upside down, like they did Mussolini.

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ESQ: We seem to be in an age of diabolical hoaxes. First the "weapons of mass destruction" ruse, and now Madoff and the banks. Do you think people are more suspicious as a result?

AA: They will still believe what they see and hear. We're a nation of sheep. If you go out and look up at the sky, people around you will start looking up at the sky. Nothing has really changed in 50,000 years. I once recommended [in a San Francisco Chronicle column] that a third arm — a plastic arm — be sewn at the base of the spine so that people could have a tripod to sit on while waiting in line, and it was taken seriously. We got a lot of mail.

ESQ: Are you an April Fools' Day guy?

AA: No, I can't do anything on April Fools' Day anymore. Everyone waits and watches. But I do get calls from the media after April 1st saying, "Did you see this story? Could this be your work?" My credibility is zero, as you can imagine. My wife claims she can go before any judge at any time and have me committed.

ESQ: You protested at the 2000 Democratic National Convention on behalf of Citizens Against Breastfeeding, a group you formed that claims breastfeeding leads to crack smoking, among other things. Did you get any sincere supporters?

AA: Oh, yes. There were people who actually believed that "the naughty nipple," as I called it, was addictive, and that mothers and babies were getting too, shall we say, close to one another. Even with clothing naked animals, there were people who wanted to send in money. A woman in Santa Barbara, California, sent a $40,000 check. I fondled it for about five minutes and then sent it back. I told her I couldn't accept money from strangers.

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ESQ: In 1985, when The Phil Donahue Show went live for the first time, you planted fainting women in the studio, and Donahue had to evacuate mid-show and continue without an audience. What did he say to you after he found out it was a hoax?

AA: His producer told me he kicked the furniture in his office, he was so upset. It really threw him out of control. It was such a bombastic thing when it happened in the studio. He said there were one or two [fainters] when he was interviewed on camera, but there were actually ten or twelve, [and some of those] people weren't with us! Then his ratings went up and he was very pleased. Phil sent me a Christmas card that said: "Hope nothing causes you to feel faint in the next year."

ESQ: The New York Times once reported you dead and had to retract an obituary for the first time in the paper's history. How did you get that past the fact checkers?

AA: It was on a Sunday, and I did it an hour before press time, so everybody was home and the second-stringers were on duty. They don't dig too deeply. I told a friend of mine who lived in a house trailer and couldn't afford a telephone that I'd pay for his phone to be installed if he listed it as Wellington Funeral Home. So [that] was the listing for where they found my body in Orem, Utah. I put a down payment on a wake at All Soul's Church on the Upper East Side. It all checked out when they made their basic phone calls. They've now doubled and tripled their efforts because of what I did.

ESQ: You have said that all of your hoaxes have a message behind them. What was the message behind the Topless String Quartet?

AA: At the time, Yoko and John Lennon were doing their nude-in-bed interviews, and there was a young lady who was playing concerts as a topless cellist. So I thought, why not have a quartet? Frank Sinatra wanted to record them, but I would say they were in Europe or Australia. They were never available. I did the same thing with the Ku Klux Klan Symphony, which was designed to expose David Duke, who was running for Louisiana governor. He was selling Mein Kampf out of the trunk of his car and wearing robes at Klan meetings. So I had a few musicians record "The William Tell Overture" out of tune and I sent it out to radio stations in Louisiana. It was supposedly a rehearsal of the KKK Symphony with David Duke as guest conductor.

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ESQ: In 1994, you went on The Jenny Jones Show with an actress playing your wife, and she said she had glued your penis to your butt while you were sleeping. Was Jenny Jones in on that?

AA: Oh no, not at all. At first, she was furious, and then they got this great exposé in the Washington Post and they were so pleased. The show was repeated over and over. The same thing happened when HBO did a documentary on male genitalia called Private Dicks Exposed. They had an 800 number and they said in the ad, "If you're interested in talking about your private parts, call," so I did. I figured all these guys were going to call in to brag about their size. So I said I was the smallest in the world. One inch, erect. And they said: "You're on the show!"

ESQ: Didn't they ever ask to see your goods?

AA: They did, when they were interviewing me for the documentary. The director said, "Everyone's taken their clothes off except you, Bruce." There were about twenty-five people on the crew, including some very attractive ladies, and I said, "Only if we can have group sex after the wrap." They said no. So I didn't have to take off my shorts.

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